From a viewpoint of accident preventing or smooth traveling when a driver drives a vehicle, it is desirable that the driver sufficiently recognizes a status around the vehicle. Therefore, techniques for notifying the driver of the status in response to a sight line of the driver have been studied (for example, Reference 1 (JP 2007-94618A)).
A notification control device disclosed in Reference 1 includes identification means for identifying a confirmation required target which is a target requiring confirmation of a user, direction detection means for detecting a face of the user or a sight line orientation of the user, confirmation detection means for detecting whether or not the user confirms the confirmation required target, based on the detected face or the detected the sight line orientation; and notification control means for controlling notification to the user so as to notify the user of a status where the user needs to confirm the confirmation required target, in a case where it is not detected that the user confirms the confirmation required target, and so as to restrict the notification of the status where the user needs to confirm the confirmation required target, in a case where it is detected that the user confirms the confirmation required target.
According to the technique disclosed in Reference 1, the orientation of the face or the sight line orientation of the user (driver) is detected using an image captured by a monocular one-dimensional camera such as a CCD camera. Therefore, for example, if a teacher image is input for each individual person and there is no adjustment for each individual person, a visual attention point including three-dimensional information cannot be calculated, and detection accuracy becomes poor. Therefore, it is not possible to properly notify the driver of a detection result in response to a visual attention status of the driver.
Thus, a need exists for an alarm device which is not susceptible to the drawback mentioned above.